


(hear on the wind) how the pendulum swings

by ipreferfiction



Series: we live or die to take the throne [6]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Planet Odessen (Star Wars), Sith Inquisitor Outlander, Star Wars: The Old Republic - Knights of the Fallen Empire, Thexan lives, Valkorion is the Actual Worst, Valkorion raises the Knight au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-17 12:35:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29471793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ipreferfiction/pseuds/ipreferfiction
Summary: And someone is emerging from the shuttle. Jana feels it first, then catches a glimpse of dark clothes and arms raised above a figure’s head. Male, light-skinned, but not dressed in armor like a Knight—The last of the steam dissipates as the man straightens on the ramp of the shuttle, hands clasped behind his head.“I’ve come to surrender to the Eternal Alliance,” says Thexan Tirall, Eternal Emperor of Zakuul, and the Force whisperstruthin Jana’s ear.[or: a choice is made.]
Relationships: Female Sith Inquisitor & Female Sith Warrior, Female Sith Inquisitor | Force Walker & Thexan
Series: we live or die to take the throne [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2153424
Kudos: 3





	(hear on the wind) how the pendulum swings

**Author's Note:**

> just for reference, the order of all the installments in this series is listed on the series page itself and is definitely going to be useful for any readers, especially as the series goes on. this particular fic is fairly early in KOTFE, just after the Outlander is made Alliance commander. and in other news, Vitiate is still the absolute worst and still deserves to be murdered with a rusty spoon. Jana just settles for doing Light things just to piss him off, which is hilarious, considering she's Dark V. spite is a powerful motivator.
> 
> title is from "caesar" by the oh hellos.

Jana needs to stop jinxing herself.

All she’d said was that the last three days had been dull. Objectively, it’s the truth; the Alliance has received no important messages—at least none that needed her examination—and no alerts have summoned them into the field. Arcann has been off massacring his way through a star system near Zakuul, and the other one, Lia, has cropped up only a few times on intelligence reports. Nothing that needs the Alliance’s attention, and absolutely  _ nothing _ interesting.

She had been going to find the nearest sparring room when Cipher Nine had stalked into the war room, practically radiating anger and leaving bloodstained footprints across their floor. Judging by that and the blood soaking her uniform, she had been in an interrogation, and anything that could interrupt her during one of  _ those _ was bound to become a priority.  _ Finally, something good, _ Jana had thought.

This is not something  _ good. _ This is something that Jana would dearly like to hand over to Lana or Theron so she can go  _ murder _ the next person who looks at her wrong.

“Hold on, say that again?” Theron demands, glancing up from his datapad. Nine is clearly resisting the urge to sigh.

“I said,” she snaps, “that a Zakuulan shuttle from the royal hangar is about to land, so unless you intend to release its passenger on Odessen, someone had better go see who it is.”

“And how do you know all of that?”

For a woman who shows emotions approximately once a month (and only in relation to the daughter most of the Alliance doesn’t know she has), Cipher Nine has a very impressive eyebrow raise.

“I have spies on Zakuul,” she says, which answers zero questions and raises several more. “And I hijacked your satellite system and retrofitted it to send me alerts if any shuttles fitting these exact descriptions were to arrive in Odessen airspace. Your security isn’t as good as you think it is.”

And without another word, she turns and follows the track of bloody prints she trailed into the war room. Whatever interrogation she’s in the middle of, it clearly has  _ some _ importance, judging by the sheer quantity of blood on her.

“She got blood on the holoterminal,” Theron groans, expression wounded, as Nine disappears around the corner.

Jana resists the urge to put her head in her hands.

Two minutes later, she is standing on the flat surface of Odessen’s landing pad as a shuttle drops through the atmosphere. Black and edged in gold, it would scream  _ Zakuulan _ even beyond the unfamiliar lettering on its sides and the Force presence within it. In the Force, Knights of Zakuul don’t feel like Jedi or Sith, though they might be Light or Dark, and this one is no exception. A strong well of power— _ very _ strong, enough to impress Jana, though not quite at her level—and Light to go along with it, the firm steadiness of a mountain or a glacier. Whoever this Knight is, with power like that, they were bound to have been high-ranking. An interesting defector, if that is what this is. Jana couldn’t imagine it being anything else; a single Knight could hardly hope to attack them, and there have been no transmissions, nor any other ships. Besides, defections are hardly unheard of, though Knights are the rarest traitors to their people. Whatever else Vitiate bred in them while he was calling himself Valkorion, Jana can’t fault their loyalty.

Though—the presence does feel a little familiar, as though Jana has brushed against it once or twice. She frowns, considering the shuttle’s occupant once more as it finishes landing. That familiarity niggles at the back of her mind. Perhaps a Knight who served with the conquerors?

“What do you think?” Rheja asks from beside her. Her arms are crossed across her chest, and with the slate-blue of her tunic and the grey of her armor, with the dark hilts of twin violet lightsabers on her belt, she looks just like she should: a guard, a Wrath. After the first false defector had lunged at Jana with a knife (three days after she’d been made Alliance commander), she started bringing a guard with her—the Battlemaster, sometimes, but Rheja more often than not. It is… strange, learning after all these years that she not only has a half-sister but that said sister was given the title of the new Emperor’s Wrath, but even in the scant few weeks since they were introduced, camaraderie has risen between them. Rheja may have disappointingly little personal ambition but she is a good warrior, made the Wrath for a reason. And she serves as a good deterrent for would-be assassins, too, so Jana keeps her at her side quite frequently.

“A Knight, I think,” Jana murmurs in reply. “Strong presence in the Force, but I can’t sense any treachery or anger, at least not directed at me. Defector from the Throne, in all likelihood.”

Rheja nods, shifting her stance into something a hair less tense. “I can feel it too,” she says. “Damn strong, whoever it is. I’ll be glad to have someone with that much power on our side.”

Jana can agree with that. The Alliance has its share of strong Force-sensitives, but another one would always be welcome. They need every lightsaber they can get if they’re to have any chance of defeating Vitiate’s children, let alone Vitiate himself, still quietly carving out a place for himself inside Jana’s mind.

Gods, she hates him with a fury transcendent. One day, when she rips every thread of his power from the corners of her head, when she tears him to pieces before the galaxy itself, she will be satisfied. For now, she just lets him see  _ exactly _ how many fantasies of killing him she truly has.

_ That shuttle does not contain who you think it does, _ echoes a voice in Jana’s skull. She bares her teeth in a flash.

_ I don’t care, _ she snaps at him, a flash of electricity crackling around her fingertips.  _ And your opinion has never mattered less to me. _

“Commander?” Rheja, always formal in public, is shooting her a concerned look.

“It’s—”  _ Vitiate _ . “Nothing.” She lets the rage around her dissipate, makes sure no more lightning is forming around her. The shuttle’s landing mechanisms have fully engaged, anyway, its door opening with a hiss and a burst of steam. They have bigger things to focus on than the Sith Emperor trying to take over Jana’s body.

Jana jerks her head at Rheja, at Theron beyond her. It’s a silent summons; she wants them behind her when she greets whoever is about to emerge from the shuttle. She comes to a halt a few feet ahead of the landing ramp and feels Rheja at her right shoulder, Theron on her left. A united front, a sliver of Alliance high command, enough to impress recruits and frighten enemies.

And someone is emerging from the shuttle. Jana feels it first, then catches a glimpse of dark clothes and arms raised above a figure’s head. Male, light-skinned, but not dressed in armor like a Knight—

The last of the steam dissipates as the man straightens on the ramp of the shuttle, hands clasped behind his head.

“I’ve come to surrender to the Eternal Alliance,” says Thexan Tirall, Eternal Emperor of Zakuul, and the Force whispers  _ truth _ in Jana’s ear.

“No!” Both of the Jedi are so  _ vehemently _ against Cipher Nine’s plan that it amuses Jana in a distant sort of way.

“We’re not just—taking his intelligence and killing him!” Vyltak exclaims, lekku twitching faintly against his back. Despite being a Sith before his defection to the Jedi Order, and despite (or because of) the slave brand on his chin, Vyl is the Lightest person in this room. His pale blue skin is flushed in disagreement as he faces off against Nine, dark stripes only serving to make him look fiercer, and though Jana knows enough about him to know he certainly won’t attack her, to an outsider Nine would appear to be the loser in this scenario.

Not, of course, that the spy’s face changes in the slightest as Vyl argues with her.

The Battlemaster disagrees just as strongly, and Jana knows that  _ she _ isn’t held back by the same soft nature that stays Vyl’s hand. Arms crossed, Force signature crackling with power and anger, it isn’t difficult to see why she is one of the most respected—and feared—members of the Alliance (and that is  _ without _ the way she keeps the first Wrath in check with a look, as though an immortal assassin is just another of her allies to be commanded, which has managed to leave every Sith raised with the terror of the Wrath tattooed into their very bones in frightened awe of her).

“There is no lie when he speaks,” the Battlemaster says, leveling a sharp gaze at Nine. “And if you want to kill him, you’re going to have to go through both of us to do it.”

Nine shrugs one deceptively narrow shoulder.

“It was simply a suggestion if he does prove false,” she says, obviously unconvinced with the word of two Jedi—and a Sith, Jana had felt the same truth when he spoke that the others did.

Jana would be content to let this argument play out for longer, especially with the way Theron and Lana appear to be about to insert themselves once more, but the matter of the Eternal Emperor currently sitting in their cells being watched by Rheja and a Jedi healer who could render him unconscious if he tried to escape is rather pressing. As entertaining as this constant debate has become, they don’t have another three hours to spare to decide Thexan Tirall’s fate. This matter needs to be resolved, and  _ quickly. _

“Enough,” Jana says firmly, silencing the next round of debate before it begins. “We’re not killing him, not yet. Senya, I need to know that your opinion is as unbiased as you can make it.”

The first thing Senya had argued was that Thexan truly meant his surrender and consequential defection. She and Vyl had been the first two to argue that Thexan should be accepted to the Alliance, and she had vouched strongly for her son from the moment that Theron had commed her to tell her exactly who had just stepped from a shuttle onto Odessen’s surface. But Senya is biased; Thexan is her son, and if she can’t even let Jana kill  _ Arcann _ without argument, of course she’ll protest against turning away the least warlike of her children.

Senya is quiet but serious as she nods. “I have no illusions about what my children are,” she says slowly. “And Thexan… he never would have wanted the throne. He was the most like me, which meant he was never Valkorion’s favorite. It meant he escaped the worst of his father’s treatment, too. All my son wants is peace.”

Thexan was one of the original conquerors, was sitting the Eternal Throne when the Republic and the Empire fell, so Jana is a little skeptical of that last sentence. Still, the man has an undeniably Light presence, without the golden eyes of the other three, so there must be some veracity to Senya’s claims. It’s enough to stay her hand, at least for now. If they are to have any hope of bringing the Eternal Empire to its knees, they need every last scrap of information they can get, every ally the galaxy is willing to offer them. And if that means accepting the former Eternal Emperor like they welcomed Senya, it’s something Jana is more than willing to do. She wants the Throne to  _ burn, _ and Vitiate along with it.

_ You cannot possibly be considering this, _ her greatest enemy says.  _ This is a more foolish mistake than I thought you capable of. That weak child will do you no good. _

Speak of the undead Sith Lord and he appears.

_ Actually, I am considering it, _ Jana says.  _ And thank you for making my decision for me. _

“For now, Thexan stays,” she announces. She doesn’t tell them that it’s exclusively out of spite for Vitiate, but what Alliance high command doesn’t know won’t hurt them. “Senya, I trust your judgement for now, and Thexan does seem to be telling the truth. Cipher Nine—I want you to question him tomorrow,  _ without _ any tools, and see what he knows. Give the intelligence to Theron; he’ll be able to come up with a plan. The rest of you, you’re dismissed to your usual duties. Battlemaster, take command until I return.”

The Jedi nods, though she looks a little resigned. “My name is J’lima. You’re allowed to use it,” she says, a little futilely. Jana has only known her for two weeks anyway, and the title of  _ Battlemaster _ carries weight here. Names are for friends and servants; titles carry the respect of an ally.

“Where are you going?” Lana asks Jana as she stands to leave, the first thing she’s spoken in quite some time. From her place near the door, she is shooting Jana a look hovering somewhere between concerned and disapproving.

Jana uncrosses her arms and runs her fingers over the sharp tip of her ancestral saberstaff.

“I’m going to speak to our guest.”

Thexan Tirall is perched a little awkwardly on the edge of the cell’s bunk when Jana strides through the prison doors and comes to stop in front of the humming red energy field keeping him in place. She nods at the healer and jerks her head at Rheja in a dismissal. If it comes to a fight, she can take him. He isn’t even armed, not that that makes a Force-user much less dangerous, but Jana is well-trained and  _ powerful. _ If he tries anything, he will die.

Though when she looks at him, it’s clear he isn’t planning on it.

“Outlander,” he greets her, without the fire with which his siblings spit it. Jana is used to hearing it as a sort of curse, but Thexan says it with respect.

“I’m not entirely sure what I should address you as,” Jana replies as the forcefield comes down and she steps inside the cell. “‘Eternal Emperor’ doesn’t quite feel correct anymore.”

Thexan smiles a little, though it rings hollow. “My name will do.”

“Your mother seems fairly convinced that you really have turned sides,” Jana says lightly, leaning back against the wall behind her. Thexan’s surprise twines through the Force and across his face at the mention of Senya and the knowledge that she vouched for him. Though, she supposes, it’s been a very long time since he or his siblings saw their mother. Evidently, they don’t know quite how much Senya still cares for them.

Gods, Vitiate really did do an extraordinary amount of damage on his family.

“I—hadn’t realized she would believe that any of us could be saved,” he says after a long pause. Jana suppresses a sigh. The look on his face…

“Yes, well, she’s been fighting nonstop for you against several opinions that feel you’d better serve us dead. Apparently, you don’t take much after Vitiate. That’s a good thing,” she says at the flash of  _ guilt-shame-worry _ that shoots through his Force signature. “And Senya is a trusted ally. I have no plans to kill you. As a matter of fact, I believe your expertise will be needed. Senya may have been high-ranking, but you’ll know far more than she does. You could make a very valuable ally.”

“Thank you, I think,” he replies. Anxiety slips off his face, replaced with steadiness. “I have information on Zakuul and the Eternal Empire. And my siblings…” He exhales slowly. “I will help you fight them. But I don’t believe they’re lost.”

“You and Senya both,” Jana says wearily. What is it about the man who stabbed her in the chest and the women who tried to kill her allies that screams  _ redemption? _ No, she’ll be perfectly satisfied if she can end them all herself, especially Arcann, though she isn’t going to say that to his twin. As content as this family seems to be to rip itself apart from the inside, Jana doubts that Thexan lacks sympathy for them all, especially now that his brother has taken the Eternal Throne in his stead.

“I understand your hesitation, but I know my siblings. Our father did his damage well, but I can’t believe that they can never be saved. And I  _ will _ lend my aid to the Alliance in whatever way you need, but I won’t kill them.”

If only they seemed to have the same compunctions. The way Senya talked about her daughter and the confrontation they had, none of those three will even hesitate in killing Thexan if they get the opportunity. Still, he could serve the Alliance well. And she accepted Senya, made her a trusted advisor even against several protests, and she could use someone more familiar with Zakuul as it is now. Koth might be a good pilot, but he’s going to end up electrocuted if he doesn’t shut up about how  _ great _ a ruler Vitiate was before Jana stuck a lightsaber through the back of his latest vessel.

As much as Arcann and Lia and Vaylin need to fall, Jana can’t lose sight of her  _ true _ enemy, the one living inside her head.

Oh, Vitiate is going to die, and he will die  _ badly. _ She is looking forward to burning him to ash, excising that twisting Dark from her mind. She is Sith, she is  _ strong, _ and she is done letting masters tell her what she can and cannot do, done letting ghosts steal her body and lock her away inside her own mind until all she knows is fear. She will  _ never _ bend her knee to anyone again. But oh, she will make Vitiate kneel before she breaks him.

She will make him  _ bow. _

And if that means making Thexan Tirall her advisor and setting him against his siblings just so she can kill their father, she’ll do it gladly. It makes Vitiate furious, too; she can feel that low, all-consuming  _ rage _ in her head, lashing out against her mental shields. He could break through easily (far too easily, Vitiate with his terrible power) but he hasn’t, not yet. Jana can’t stop the creeping thought that he’s waiting for something  _ truly _ worthy of his attention, and clearly Thexan isn’t it.

So Jana doesn’t pull her saberstaff from her belt, doesn’t call lightning to her fingertips, doesn’t make Thexan  _ hurt _ like she almost wants to for five years in imperfect carbonite, for the siblings that keep trying to kill her. She extends a gloved hand towards him instead, and nods when he grasps her forearm despite the look of faint surprise on his face.

“Welcome to the Alliance, Thexan,” she says, and the Force  _ shifts _ around him.

Vitiate is going to die, and Thexan will help her do it. It’s a promise.


End file.
